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1. Relationship between Delay Discounting and Risk Preference in Chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes) and Humans

   Keupp, Stefanie ; Grueneisen, Sebastian ; Warneken, Felix ; Ludvig, Elliot Andrew ; Melis, Alicia P. ( July 2021 , Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society)

   Adaptive decisions require that decision makers factor in the subjective values of different possible outcomes, and the probability of these outcomes occurring. Subjective values depend, among other things, on how far an outcome is away in time. This can be captured by assessing an individual’s delay discounting of different options. An individual’s risk preference also affects how attractive particular choice options appear to them. In humans, probability discounting and delay discounting are often related. People who show more risky behaviors also tend to be more impulsive and less patient. Based on such findings, single-process models of delay discounting and probability discounting have been suggested. In the current study, we tested if this relationship is equally present in chimpanzees, one of human’s closest extant evolutionary relatives. We presented 23 chimpanzees with a patience task and a risky-choice task. The patience task was designed to explicitly distinguish between delay preference and self-control (i.e., the ability to wait a given delay). Still, we found no strong correlations between risk and delay preferences. As this task has not been used with humans before, we implemented a computerized version and tested it in a sample of twenty adult participants. Initial results indicate that the task is well suited to capture patience, and it makes a promising candidate to be used in behavioral delay discounting experiments in humans. 

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2. Adolescents’ perceptions of social risk and prosocial tendencies: Developmental change and individual differences

   https://doi.org/10.1111/sode.12630  

   Armstrong‐Carter, Emma ; Do, Kathy T. ; Duell, Natasha ; Kwon, Seh‐Joo ; Lindquist, Kristen A. ; Prinstein, Mitch J. ; Telzer, Eva H. ( September 2022 , Social Development)

   Many prosocial behaviors involve social risks such as speaking out against a popular opinion, bias, group norm, or authority. However, little is known about whether adolescents’ prosocial tendencies develop over time with their perceptions of social risks. This accelerated longitudinal study used within‐subject growth‐curve analyses to test the link between adolescents' prosocial tendencies and social risk perceptions. Adolescents completed self‐reports annually for 3 years (N= 893;M_age= 12.30 years, 10–14 years at Wave 1, and 10–17 years across the full study period; 50% girls, 33% White non‐Latinx, 27% Latinx, 20% African American, 20% mixed/other race). The association between social risk tolerance and prosocial tendencies changed significantly across adolescence. Specifically, for younger adolescents, more prosocial tendencies were associated significantly with less social risk tolerance, whereas for relatively older adolescents, more prosocial tendencies were associated marginally with more social risk tolerance. Additional individual differences by empathy (but not sensation seeking) emerged. These findings suggest that prosocial tendencies across adolescence may be associated with an underlying ability to tolerate social risks.

    

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3. Variation in primate decision-making under uncertainty and the roots of human economic behaviour

   https://doi.org/10.1098/rstb.2019.0671  

   De Petrillo, Francesca ; Rosati, Alexandra G. ( March 2021 , Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences)

   null (Ed.)

   Uncertainty is a ubiquitous component of human economic behaviour, yet people can vary in their preferences for risk across populations, individuals and different points in time. As uncertainty also characterizes many aspects of animal decision-making, comparative research can help evaluate different potential mechanisms that generate this variation, including the role of biological differences or maturational change versus cultural learning, as well as identify human-unique components of economic decision-making. Here, we examine decision-making under risk across non-human primates, our closest relatives. We first review theoretical approaches and current methods for understanding decision-making in animals. We then assess the current evidence for variation in animal preferences between species and populations, between individuals based on personality, sex and age, and finally, between different contexts and individual states. We then use these primate data to evaluate the processes that can shape human decision-making strategies and identify the primate foundations of human economic behaviour. This article is part of the theme issue ‘Existence and prevalence of economic behaviours among non-human primates’. 

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4. Sex moderates the effects of total sleep deprivation and sleep restriction on risk preference

   https://doi.org/10.1093/sleep/zsac120  

   Lim, Jeryl Y. L. ; Boardman, Johanna ; Dyche, Jeff ; Anderson, Clare ; Dickinson, David L. ; Drummond, Sean P. A. ( June 2022 , Sleep)

   Sleep loss has been shown to alter risk preference during decision-making. However, research in this area has largely focussed on the effects of total sleep deprivation (TSD), while evidence on the effects of sleep restriction (SR) or the potentially moderating role of sex on risk preference remains scarce and unclear. The present study investigated risky decision-making in 47 healthy young adults who were assigned to either of two counterbalanced protocols: well-rested (WR) and TSD, or WR and SR. Participants were assessed on the Lottery Choice Task (LCT), which requires a series of choices between two risky gambles with varying risk levels. Analyses on the pooled dataset indicated across all sleep conditions, participants were generally more risk-seeking when trying to minimise financial loss (LOSSES) than while trying to maximise financial gain (GAINS). On GAINS trials, female participants were more risk-averse during TSD and SR, whereas male participants remained unchanged. On LOSSES trials, female participants remained unchanged during TSD and SR, whereas male participants became more risk-seeking during TSD. Our findings suggest the relationship between sleep loss and risk preference is moderated by sex, whereby changes in risk preference after TSD or SR differ in men and women depending on whether the decision is framed in terms of gains or losses.

    

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5. Risk‐taking in free‐living spotted hyenas is associated with anthropogenic disturbance, predicts survivorship, and is consistent across experimental contexts

   https://doi.org/10.1111/eth.12964  

   Turner, Julie W. ; LaFleur, Rebecca M. ; Richardson, Allie T. ; Holekamp, Kay E. ; Ebensperger, ed., Luis ( October 2019 , Ethology)

   Anthropogenic disturbance can have important influences on the fitness and behaviors of wild animals, including their boldness when exposed to risky conditions. We presented spotted hyenas (Crocuta crocuta) from two populations, each exposed to a different level of human activity, with a life‐size model hyena representing an intruder from another clan. The high‐disturbance population lived adjacent to human settlements, and the low‐disturbance population inhabited a relatively undisturbed part of the same national park in Kenya. The mock intruder was presented to individual hyenas to assess their reactions to an alien hyena, and to determine whether their reactions varied with their exposure to anthropogenic activity. We found that human disturbance was indeed associated with hyena risk‐taking behavior in response to the model intruder. Hyenas tested in the low‐disturbance area exhibited more risk‐taking behaviors by approaching the mock intruder more closely, and spending more time near it, than did their counterparts living in high‐disturbance areas. Hyenas that spent less time in close proximity to the model had greater survivorship than those that spent more time in close proximity to it, regardless of disturbance level. Furthermore, the individual differences in risk‐taking measured here were consistent with those obtained previously from the same animals using a different set of experimental manipulations. However, the experimentally induced behaviors were not consistent with naturally occurring risk‐taking behaviors in proximity to lions; this suggests that risk‐taking behaviors are consistent within individuals across experimental contexts, but that exposure to lions elicits different responses. Although our results are consistent with those from earlier tests of anthropogenic disturbance and boldness in spotted hyenas and other predators, they differ from results obtained from birds and small mammals, which are generally found to be bolder in areas characterized by human disturbance.

    

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